Mark Choi 2 min read

Giving an object a gesture.

A hot-air-balloon reference led to a candle-holder concept whose character comes from how it could move.

A RenderWeekly tea candle holder exploration. These are renders of an untested design concept.

For a Render Weekly tea-candle theme, I wanted to make something playful. A hot air balloon felt like a natural place to start: a small source of warmth below a light, open shape. It offered a familiar image with room to explore.

After some digging, I found that candle holders resembling hot air balloons already existed. The connection itself was not new. What interested me was how it might feel in a more contemporary object, and whether I could take it beyond a change in appearance.

I refined the form, then explored a push-to-collapse and expand interaction. In the concept, sliding cylinders with click features work with a flexible metal wire that bends as the form moves. The intended movement lets the balloon reference become part of how someone engages with the object, as well as what they see.

The balloon-shaped holder shown extended by a hand — Two rendered states of the proposed push-to-collapse and expand interaction. The mechanism and use with a candle have not been validated in these images.

The same concept shown in its collapsed position — Two rendered states of the proposed push-to-collapse and expand interaction. The mechanism and use with a candle have not been validated in these images.

That shift gave the exercise its direction. A candle holder could have remained a static silhouette. Adding a gesture meant thinking about two states and the movement between them. The mechanism became part of the idea, rather than something hidden behind the final shape.

Exploring that interaction gave me a way to ask more of the form: could a small action give an ordinary object more intention?

The hot air balloon gave me an image to begin with. Exploring how it could move gave me something to design.